The Idea and the Wardrobe
I am in the process of reading “The Myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun. An easy read packed with lots of cool stuff, certainly a book I would recommend. There are a number of blog posts brewing based on what I have read so far and likely a few more as I finish the last couple of chapters.
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When I read a book now I tend to do a lot of highlighting writing in the margins and bending pages to point to really interesting stuff. Plenty of highlighting and bent pages in this book and that is a good thing. There is one particular anecdote regarding ideas that I wanted to share.
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Chapter 5 is called “The Lone Inventor” and there is a sub-heading titled “The challenge of simultaneous invention”. The author presents what I would like to call the wardrobe analogy. Imagine that you go into a large department store and see racks of similar clothes as far as the eye can see. You shop about and then pick “your” wardrobe from the merchandise available. Basically you pick “your” clothes from an array of identical clothing although the same clothing is there in different sizes and such also available to everyone else. Then you take home your purchases and it becomes your wardrobe. People are always surprised later on when they see someone else in “their” clothes even though there were plenty available at the store for everyone to choose from.
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The clothes in the department store are like the environment or breeding ground for ideas and innovation. Your wardrobe is like that unique idea that you come up with that is entirely your own. In fact with the proper environment and circumstance many people will come to the same sorts of idea and innovation.
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Anyway, I thought the concept of “Simultaneous Invention” was a very cool idea. I hope someone else hasn’t beaten me to it.
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Ian Graham
Interesting perspective Ian but shouldn’t we be concentrating more on creating our own new design and not simply combining the works of other designers and declaring the way we wear the combination of items as being an original?
That is not to say that Maddona wearing her bra outside of her dress wasn’t original but Yves St. Laurent designing a new dress has greater commercial value in my estimation.
Improvements to what we have are certainly easier to make and see early commercializtion. That is not unlike generic drugs where those generic drug manufacturer companies did not make the same investment into the discovery of the original drug.
They each have their place in the commercial world but the originator is more of what I refer to as being the true inventor and the rest simply re-packagers of that original invention.
Anyway here I go again making comments on a book I didn’t read.